Tuesdays With Story
Fifth Tuesday stories
July 31, 2018
Writing challenge: Write a fake book blurb, a nice way to roast a fellow writer. Example: blurb Larry Sommers’ latest book, The Sommers’ System for Writing a Bestselling Novel in 30 Days.
200 words max.
Children’s Author Strikes Again
Lisa McDougal
Monsters in my Soup
By Millie Mader
Monkey-Man Publishing, 2013
220 pages
Retail: $8.49
Smell the soup and it’ll make you hungry. Eat the soup and it’ll make you a monster. Monsters in my Soup is a terrifying children tale about the perils of eating soup. This isn’t your grandma’s special chicken noodle soup. Also, this isn’t your grandma. When monsters invade the little town of Safe Haven, Connecticut, posing as grandmothers aiming to enslave children by feeding them their special soup. Can our heroes, Blake, Jake, and Cake, stop them in time before they get so hungry that they eat the soup?
Millie Mader is the author of the children’s books, Creatures in my Teachers and No Razzle in my Dazzle.
—Lisa McDougal, author, It’s a Crime not to Give a Child a Horse
Obsessing About Obsession
Brandy Larson
Fat: The Anthropology of Obsession
Don Kulick & Ann Meneley, Editors
Jeremy P Tarcher / Penguin
2005
246 pages
$16.95
Fat is a word that’s often on the lips as well as on the hips. Thirteen professional anthropologists, and one activist weigh in with a variety of international takes on the topic. Fat means very different things to many, it seems, a subject no one is indifferent to. Reviewed is how every year in America billions of dollars are spent on books, programs, pre-packaged diets and fitness clubs. “Lite” foods are marketed to every demographic and contrasted with “food porn” as seen in TV commercials, magazines, on billboards and Facebook pages.
These authors, often imbedded with their subjects for up to a year, go global with stories of: fattening the young, beautiful brides of Yemen; studying teen girls in Sweden who talk about fat all day, every day and their obsession with how to avoid it; as well as the idealization of larger size in the fairer sex in Niger, Africa. Fat is viewed positively by an Italian heirloom grower of olives and producer of olive oil, some more expensive than champagne. In Hawaii, Spam’s history in their diet is featured, describing how it is relished and incorporated into many ethnic dishes. One chapter tells how oversized women (BBWs—big beautiful women) and another chapter on very large, furry men called “bears,” are both fetishized online, in magazines and how they are sought after as partners.
Fat activists in Toronto, under their homemade banner “Pretty, Porky and Pissed Off” emphasize that “fat comes in more than one size.” They stage demonstrations accosting people on the street, asking them, “Do you think I’m fat?” and have a street performance dancing in leotards to “Baby Elephant Walk,” crushing lots of cakes with their ample backsides as the finale. [Who says the personal isn’t political?] Also featured are super-sized rappers. Find out why they are lionized in some sectors the U.S. music world.
When it comes to fat, the authors demonstrate “one size does not fit all.” The academic and writing credentials of each contributor is featured at the end of the book, as well as a joint introduction by the editors who contribute a chapter each to the book.
—Brandy Larson, author, Hoky Diets You Should Avoid
Down with the Old Rules, Up with the New
Cindi Dyke
When is a Hyphen not a Hyphen?
- Dash and M. Dash
*Edited by their salty mother, Mrs. Dash
WARP, Inc (Write All Right Publishers, Inc)
1951 (Post-Depression but Pre-Spell-Check Era)
112 pages
$9.11
*Knowledge gained: priceless
In America, the grammar patterns of rich white men are the basis of Standard American English, random rules from the upper class to protect themselves from the rising middle class. To break free of these nonsensical shackles of convention, this book is a must read. This treasure trove of progressive thought will deepen your understanding of why good grammar is in the eye of the beholder.
Ain’t was proper grammar until banned by supercilious educators in 1800. Thankfully, writers Withers (Ain’t No Sunshine) and Dylan (It Ain’t Me, Babe) read this book. Otherwise Lay Lady Lay might have been Lie Lady Lie which, though correct, is unforgivably wrong.
If two negatives equal a positive in math, why are double negatives deemed illogical? Who among us would deny the Rolling Stones their Satisfaction? Squander not another precious second discussing the merits of the pretentious Oxford comma. Replace prescriptive grammar with unrestricted descriptive grammar and watch your writing come to life!
—Cindi Dyke
*Dyke is the author of two bestsellers. The first, Hyphenated and Non-Hyphenated: Now Isn’t That Ironic? was published in 1993. The second, I Find Joy in Cooking My Grandchildren and My Pets, is an autobiography published in 2003, one year before the trial.
Open Letter to Theodor Geisel—alias Dr. Seuss
Millie Mader
“Age is not measured by candles on cake, but counting instead all the pills you must take.” With apology to Dr. Seuss
*******************
Dr. Seuss, you failed to mention what the pills are for. Your public wants to know. You mention an occasion where Horton can’t hear the Who. Are you getting hard of hearing? You also noted that you think your brain may have shrunk “three sizes.” Is dementia rearing its ugly head? What about the Cat in the Hat? It messed up the owner’s house—then cleaned it up in an unbelievably short time. Are you becoming just a trifle spacey?
If you are still of sound mind, just advise your readers, please. We are mostly grandparents now and will empathize with any disabilities.
—Millie Mader, author of the novel Life on Hold, a November 2016 Book-of-the-Month Club selection
This Goddess has a Galore of Problems
Meg Matenaer
The Undomestic Goddess
Sophie Kinsella
The Dial Press, July 2005
374 pages
$23.00
The Undomestic Goddess is a must-read for an education on how to throw one’s life away. Readers will delight in heroine Samantha Sweeting’s verve as she has a breakdown at the cusp of making partner at London’s top law firm, runs from a massive on-the-job mistake, and accepts a housekeeping position in rural England despite lacking even the basic domestic skills.
Ms. Kinsella writes with almost experiential knowledge of the inner workings of female hysteria and propensity to run from conflict. Samantha’s flighty, irrational, indecisive, and erratic behavior about whether or not to right a wrong at the law firm, as well as her many failed attempts in the kitchen of her new employers, will resonate with all female readers.
Generous details regarding character’s clothes, skin care routines, and state of their hair grace the pages. The important task of pie-making is handled with appropriate gravitas. Floral arrangements appear frequently and intentionally. Throw in a knight in shining armor in the form of an underachieving gardener, and Ms. Kinsella has a recipe for success!
—M. Matenaer
Editor, Patriarch Press
The Joys—Tongue in cheek—of Length, Characters, and Complexity
Tracey Gemmell
Final Stronghold
John Schneller
George Lucas Enterprises. Release date: March 20th. Year, TBD
14,976,142.5 pages
Hardcover with holographic CD: $10 per lb.
Over mountains, through forests, across seas, and underground, Kotel’s quest for something keeps him moving forward. Aided by a million otherworldly characters—and opposed by equally as many—he must survive attack after attack to gain the ultimate knowledge he seeks and free himself from the guilt of past failures. When will it end? Even the author doesn’t know. But the journey will leave you afraid of garogs for the rest of your life.
With enough battles to put even the Trump administration to shame, this epic hero’s journey of discovery, skirmishes, friendships, fights, fantastical creatures, and conflicts, is destined for big screen blockbuster immortality.
Highly recommended for fans of War and Peace: The Harry Potter/Indiana Jones Years.
—Tracey Gemmell, author of Keeping Quests Straight in Epic Novels and Memory Deficits: The Case for Pull-out Character Lists.
Non-sequiturs a Problem
Larry Sommers
Irenaeus at the Laundromat
by His Eminence, the Rev. Dr. Jack Freiburger, Ph. D., Ad Infinitum
Rand McNally, 2022
1,592 pp.
$42.95
The publication of Irenaeus at the Laundromat, should it finally come to pass, will be cheered by fans still looking up the allusions in the author’s previous best-sellers, Jesus at the I-Hop and Augustine at the Hippodrome—for at last, the end of this peripatetic trilogy appears to be in sight. But the light at the end of the tunnel may not overcome the darkness, as the noted deconstructive evangelist gives us a view of the renowned bishop and patriarch that only a Gnostic, in his most feverish heresies, could imagine. What are we to make, for example, of the scenes in which the young Irenaeus, en route from Smyrna to Lyon, expertly samples the vintages of Châteauneuf-du-Pape more than a thousand years before Clement V even dreamed of bringing the papacy to Avignon? Such non-sequiturs are bound to leave discerning readers, from Eusebius of Caesarea to the Venerable Bede, scratching their heads. However, after following Jesus of Nazareth all over the known world in all periods, both ancient and modern; and doing much the same with the renowned Doctor of Grace; about all we can affirm without hesitancy is that Saint Paul is not to be found in Minneapolis.
—Larry F. Sommers, author of the Izzy Mahler Stories and other light classics.
Big Footprints on This Book
Jerry Peterson
Surya and the Elephant
by Kashmira Sheth
Hyperion, July 25, 2018
278 pages
$14.95
Sheth, the author of a small mountain of YA novels and picture books for little children, is back with a second volume to feature her newest hero, Surya, forced in Book 1 to become a detective to restore the reputation of his father, his father accused of robbing the temple he served of its treasures. In Book 2, Surya confronts the effects of a sprawling population on the environment in India when he befriends a juvenile forest elephant he names Druheda, Druheda abandoned and starving in a dwindling forest outside of Surya’s village. All goes well when the king becomes a patron of a food cart business that Surya starts to raise money to save the elephants, a food cart business that specializes in Indian patty cakes served with cardamom-flavored monkey milk. Recipes for the cakes, six other Indian street treats, and the minty monkey milk that is made, not of the milk of wild monkeys, but of almonds and liquefied tofu are included. Very vegetarian.
—Jerry Peterson, Wisconsin State Journal reviewer and author of Early’s Fall and 18 additional novels and short-story collections
Fake News Before There was Such a Thing
Larry Sommers
Early Ropes a Bum Steer
by Jerry Peterson
Peterson Far-flung Enterprises Press, Any Time Now
Kindle, unpaginated
$3.95
In this action-packed novella, Sheriff James Early saddles up once more to ensure domestic tranquility. The place is Kansas, the date 1950ish, and the lawman has got wind of a cattle-rustling con artist who sells his victims their own cattle back with strangely altered brands. “An unlikely way to make a dishonest buck,” Early comments to Deputy Hemland Hawkins as the two set out for Topeka, to peruse mug shots in the Big State Crime Book. While on a lunch break at the Harvey House in Topeka’s famed Santa Fe Station, they encounter ex-governor Alf Landon, eating shoo-fly pie while waiting for a train to his summer home in Evergreen, Colorado. Landon conveys the unpleasant news that Early’s so-called rustler is merely a myth concocted by an unscrupulous reporter, Clint Boone, down on his luck after the war and rustling up a tall tale to sell his bosses at the International News Service. Early frowns on the waste of taxpayer resources, in the form of himself and his deputy, chasing a media-induced will-o’-the-wisp, but Hemland Hawkins philosophizes: “Relax, James, and have another piece of pie. At least you can say you got in on the ground floor of fake news.”
—Larry F. Sommers, author of the immigrant saga Freedom’s Purchase, now in the umpteeth version of its first draft.
Big Foot Doesn’t Save This Day
Jerry Peterson
The Dragoneer, Book 2: New World
by Amber Boudreau
Scholastic, July 20, 2018
336 pages
$14.95
Fans of Boudreau’s first YA fantasy, The Dragoneer, aren’t going to like the sequel. Boudreau kills Zephyr, the dragon readers grew to love in Book 1, less than 20 pages into Book 2. That leaves the heroine, Moira Noble, short a partner in her quest to find the individual who is trying to kill her and who may now have killed Zephyr. Enter Wolfgang the giant whom Noble finds stomping grapes in a vat the size of a hot tub for six on page 30. Maybe it’s peas he’s stomping because the juice is green. Anyway, are we making wine in juvenile fiction now? Before we can find out, Wolfgang leaves the vat behind to join Noble. He becomes her protector and, in a bargain, enlists her help in finding his cousin, the jolly giant Mundelein—he’s blue, not green—whom the Dark Lord who rules Wolfgang’s world has imprisoned for telling far too many jokes about dictators and presidents. It’s a strange book.
—Jerry Peterson, Wisconsin State Journal reviewer and author of Early’s Fall and 18 additional novels and short-story collections
You’ll Love This Book
Larry Sommers
Fiona’s Fall
by Tracey Gemmell
Publisher Pending, Next Year This Time
199 pp.
£8.99 (more at airports)
Everybody is whispering about crazy Fiona—at least, that’s what crazy Fiona crazily, thinks. It all began when Nigel, her fiancé of decades’ standing, stopped at Ladbrokes for a wee flutter on a colt named Chequers, which made him—Nigel, not the horse—exactly 42 minutes late. The soufflé Fiona had prepared had fallen, like everything else—like Nigel’s arches, like Fiona’s bustline, like any hope of a happy and fulfilled life as Nigel’s blushing bride. And in the interim, Mum and Dad had telephoned to complain that Fiona had forgotten the biscuits when she bought their groceries, and they must have their biscuits posthaste. So when Nigel walked in the door, he met Fiona walking out, hat on head and purse in hand, bent on catching the Underground to Waterloo, with only a vague thought she might try out as a seamstress in the wardrobe department of the Old Vic, where she was sure she would be far away from everybody’s whispers about her. And for the record, Chequers came in almost as late as Nigel. This is Ms. Gemmell’s fourth novel. If you liked Dunster’s Calling, Something-or-other About Annie, and Accidentally Lavender, you will love Fiona’s Fall.
—Larry F. Sommers, still hoping to gain traction.
Trash
Jerry Peterson
The American James Bond: My 40 Years as a Spy for the CIA – Book 2
by Larry Sommers
Scribners, July 18, 2018
726 pages
$29.95
Trash, absolute trash. Seven hundred twenty-six pages of Cold War drivel and not a word to be believed. Just one example: If Author Sommers, from Madison, Wisconsin, had really made love to Russian spy Pussy Willow as he claims, Willow, a protégé of Vladimir Putin—to get access to secret USSR plans for an anti-missile system in 1987—Sommers’ wife, who has always kept him on a short leash, would have punished him in a most heinous way. Perhaps it may still happen. At the least, she should deep-six his laptop before he can write the third installment of his memoirs. It’s one more torment we do not need.
—Jerry Peterson, Wisconsin State Journal reviewer and author of Early’s Fall and 18 additional novels and short-story collections
Tuesdays with Story 
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